Transcendentalism Leaves of Grass
By the late 19th century, Walt Whitman had become positioned at the forefront of the American cultural lexicon. His poetry was at once brash, dissonant and resoundingly erotic. His raw, unabashed poetry flew in the face of the prevailing ideals of his time. Whitman's greatest literary accomplishment, Leaves of Grass, had set the ideas of divinity, the hierarchy of the holy trinity, and the ethereal perfection afforded these things into turmoil. What he did was take the theologian ideas of perfection and divinity and juxtaposed them onto mankind and the world around him. This theology of transcendentalism was the cornerstone theme throughout all of Whitman's writing. Throughout Whitman's poetry, there exists several major themes. First, the idea of the Holy Trinity of father-son-holy spirit is taken from a heavenly, theological realm and brought into the present. Second, there is the idea of the Adamic myth of America, whereupon mankind has found a temporal Garden of Eden in which to recreate himself and the world around him. The final theme is that of the perfect order of the cosmos as the stage for which these things can happen. Whitman makes the case that each individual, each "leaf
Whitman further extended this idea of the new trinity to that of nature. What had commonly been viewed in a utilitarian manner was now being put on the same level as God. Instead of His creation, nature was an indelible and inseparable part of the reality of existence. Nature existed alongside man and the heavens, not subservient to it. In fact, Whitman believes that the worthwhile man is the kind who spends his time with nature, exploring nature. Nature is seen in just as a divine a sense as the heavens. Walt Whitman was a writer who defined a generation of American literature. The juxtaposition of the divinity of the Holy Trinity onto the New Trinity was a major theme in the Transcendentalist movement. Whitman took these and brought them to the level of the common man. Man being one with nature as well as one with God was a major reversal in popular ideology within America. No longer was mankind to aspire to the perfection of God, he must merely choose to be such. Whitman had abolished the idea of original sin as casting a pall on the spirit of every man, woman, and child born into the Christian religion. They should not repent and seek redemption, he argued, they should look into this new beginning as a way to create a new self. Whitman thought that man could choose to make his own decisions without an inherent guilt bestowed upon man at the behest of Adam in the Garden of Eden. America was the New Eden. It was up to man to create his own destiny. Above all, these things existed within the grand cosmic structure of the universe and all moved in harmonious conjunction. Nature, man and God all traveled through the great cosmos of space and time as one. Whitman attempted to show that the things which he wrote were not exclusive of one and other, but were intertwined to the very core of each one's existence. It was that idea which stated the true ideals of transcendentalism. The idea of the divinity of nature avails itself throughout Whitman's poetry. He often defines the goodness of nature in the same breath as the wonder of the heavens above. He brings heaven down to earth. To him, there is nothing more beautiful than the ocean waves crashing or the hummingbird singing. These things are part of nature, a part of the cosmos. Though I have defined the "new trinity", it must be noted that even the arguments for God and man and nature as perfection, these things do not exist exclusively. There is a central, overriding theme to which all of these things belong. This theme is that of space and time. All things, whether it is nature, whether it is mankind or whether it is God all exist in this space/time continuum. Whitman argues that all things must move through space over the course of time. This continuum defines the universe and it's ever-changing nature. Above and beyond this new trinity is the idea that there are certain, undeniable principles which rule the universe, "I see that the elementary laws never apologize". Everything is run by an unknown force of the cosmos. Whitman can't define it, nor does he try. It almost seems that the idea of space and time is not something that even he, as spokesman for mankind, should even try
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Approximate Word count = 2151
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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